One literary example, from Of Mice and Men, George must "put down" Lennie at the bank of a river (the same river across from which Lennie could only retrieve a mouse in the beginning but thus revealed Lennie's true independent free will). George mercifully provides Lennie in the end with images of attaining their own land and freedom; while his own act, being at last a kindness to his companion, is on the surface a cruelty and selfish in that he will no longer have to care for Lennie. George too then attains freedom at the bank of the river---but his freedom had the price of giving up his companionship and his surrender to the will of the mob.
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